I like it when you call me big Papa

I have a daughter.

That sentence is incredible and weird and frightening and amazing all at once. Just typing it out still doesn’t allow it to feel real. And yet, at the very same moment, this fatherhood, the urge to make as much money as I can, to provide, to care for, to nurture, feels as though it’s always been here. I’ve done this my whole life.

But it’s only been a month. And after that month I can speak definitively to the question of whether or not girls poop.

They do. Most assuredly they do. And with great vigor. It’s absolutely adorable.

She truly does very little at this stage. Wide eyed, and calm for a young child. She eats, she makes awesome noises that sound like aliens from Star Wars. She looks around (which I assure everyone means that she’s infinitely smarter than them) and relieves herself into shockingly expensive underwear. In a word, she is perfect.

If I were to try and prepare someone for the life changes of parenthood, if you were to ask me about what this is like, I don’t know that I could provide a satisfying, much less helpful, answer. The only consistently present emotion is fear. Not like a hide-under-the covers-and-hope-the-robber-leaves fear, but more of an ever present “Oh god, I don’t want to screw up this little child and destroy the rest of their life with my clueless parenting” kind of fear. Because I really don’t have any idea what I’m doing. End goals are obvious: Navigate my little girl through the hurdles of life while preparing her for independence, success and fulfillment with minimal required therapy. But it’s the smaller things that carry so much weight. These developmental years are terrifying. Everything you do shapes this innocent and perfect child. They learn everything from watching you. Not listening, but watching you; How to love, how to react to happiness, to sadness, to fight, to be angry, to discover. Every basic human element is being watched by her incredible and fast-learning brain. Absorbing all of the good and most frighteningly, all of the bad. I want her to know kindness. I want her to thirst for knowledge and to chase after that thirst with any and all tools at her disposal. I want her to treat others with a love and compassion that seems lacking on this small planet. I want her to work for the things that she wants and feel the thrill of pride upon earning them. I want her to think for herself, and not base her life off of me or her mom’s beliefs. But above everything else, and perhaps stemming from it, I want her to be happy.

I have a daughter. And this is the coolest adventure of my life.